Every day I wake up, maybe take a shower, but usually don't, but I do make my bed. One has to maintain some level of civility after all. I lounge around my house all day in the same shorts and t-shirt I wore to bed. I eat whenever I want, usually scrounge something up from the fridge and scarf it down rapidly while fucking around on the internet, mainly YouTube or I stream a TV show or movie on the big TV in the living room. Thank the universe for Netflix and Amazon Prime. Then I pretty much call it a night after many hours of this routine, sleep for about five or six hours and then...
I start the same shit all over again. Day after day after day.
Coronavirus Shelter In Place syndrome?
Nope. I've been doin' this for two fucking years. And you know what? I fuckin' love it!
And today is an important milestone in this now quarantine-for-no-reason life I lead now...it's been one year I've been living in my little green mobile home. That's right, one year at Shamrock Inches. Grander homesteads may well measure their land in acres, but here, well, we got only a few inches between you and your lovely, lovely neighbors.
Okay, now let's have some tea, shall we? How have my fellow trailer park denizens been this past year? First up, let me just say, it's a fuck of a lot better than apartment living. For decades I've had to put up with all sorts of shit living in the many, many apartment complexes, converted garages, rooms, and even mattresses in lofts. Heck, even as low as a ratty ol' loveseat. Having SOME land between you and your neighbor is wonderful, even if it's only a couple of feet or so.
Most I don't know from Adam as the saying goes since, as mentioned above, I'm a freakin' hermit, don't ya know. Hermits don't go to social gatherings. Hermits don't do like many of the other residents here, walk up and down the street (or ride a golf cart) enjoying the lovely sunset, hoping to meet and greet their fellow park dwellers. But I know a few by their proximity of course.
There's this chick to the east of my (my carport side) who keeps her yard and home exterior neat and decorated (actually everyone here does...there's not a run-down, ugly trailer anywhere. I guess they really do clamp down on that shit.) and mainly stays inside, especially, it seems, during the warmer months. But oh this winter, she and her brood of girls can make quite the racket at 3 am during 50 degree temps on their screened-in porch. They're right outside my bedroom, and I'm usually at the desk I'm at now, right near the windows on that side. They don't seem to have drunken fights or outrageous rowdy parties, but they do talk loud and apparently think their screen around their porch shields their voices. I've still not meet them, BTW, formally. I came home one evening a couple months ago and shut my hatch to my car after retrieving groceries and one of them, the daughter, I think, said "Oh that scared the shit outta me!" Not to me, I guess to her mom? Not sure. I said sorry, she didn't respond so I said it again, louder, and she said to me "It's okay." or something like that. End of contact.
But, like I said, they're not that bad.
Then there's the other side of the house, the west side (my screened-in porch side) where Mary lives. I think I talked a little about her before. She lives alone and man, you think I'm a hermit? I literally NEVER see her out. Her TV is perpetually on (well, maybe she shuts it very late when she goes to sleep) and, I just figured out what she does on it. YouTube. She streams it through an app and I can hear her navigating through it like every ten minutes because it makes a tone as you change from selection to selection on the main page. I'd been hearing this sound for the whole year now and only figured out what it was earlier this week when I listened really closely to the voices of her "show" and it sounded like one of them Top Ten list clickbait shit channels they have on YouTube. Now I watch YouTube on my computer so I don't have a "beeb...beeb" sound when selecting videos on here but I loaded up the YouTube app on my Fire Stick TV and low and behold...there was that sound. On mine, I immediately went into Settings and turned that shit off, of course, since it's annoying as fuck but either Mary doesn't know how to turn it off or she plain just doesn't care. No matter, I know I'll keep hearing that day in, day out, but, somehow, it's just a little bit less aggravating now that I know what it is.
But, like I said, she's not that bad.
Mary does actually have friends. They're the snowbirds in the unit directly in front of me on the other side of the street. They're in the house that had their door smashed in last summer while they were still up north. They're here now, been down since just before Halloween and they'll probably, if they do like many did last year, will be leaving to go back up north pretty soon. Or maybe not. They weren't here when I moved in last March 31st and they have an Easter bunny decoration on their front door so who's to say. I never talked to them either but they look like trailer park versions of my Uncle Emile and Aunt Connie. They're quiet and although they apparently are friends of Mary, they never go over and Mary never visits them. They love putting up tacky decorations for each holiday. They had lights and other decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day...and now Easter.
But, like I said, they're not that bad.
And, of course, there's Reagan and Lisa and their little dachshund Henry. Their unit, on the west side of the Gabby Girls, has two bedrooms and is maybe a couple decades newer than mine (which they used to own before they sold it to me, as you know) but inside and out, it's crammed full of junk and always looking "lived in" ie. messy. Not dirty, but laundry being done or snack boxes out or yard projects incomplete, you know...clutter. But to each their own (as I side eye my two baskets of laundry eternally filled to my left).
But, like I said, they're not that bad.
And let's not forget Lucky. Somewhere behind me, still search for that sprinkler.
But, like I said, he's not that bad.
So all in all life here at Shamrock Inches is quite fine. A great place to hang out, shut away from the world and rarely venture out from. Just four walls. But, and this is the crux...
They're MY four walls. And you know what? That's not that bad at all.